A Balanced Option for Leadership

Depending on your group and GM, the Leadership feat can either be a great addition to the game or a nightmare that makes combat take forever, causes the GM headache, and makes the other members of the party want to "keep up" by doing the same thing, resulting in a party doubling in size.

This Bullet Points release gives two options that give significant benefits to the Leadership feat, but takes out much of the room for abuse it normally allows.

The concepts are actually very straightforward - you can either have "associates" or you can have a "favored country". The two options give distinctly different benefits, but they are benefits that make sense from a Leadership perspective.

I would definitely recommend these options as alternatives to Leadership, especially for GMs who are concerned about the ramifications of introducing cohorts and followers.

Good Additions to a common archetype

The sword & board warrior is a fairly common concept, so this short product offers some options toward a character style that should see some actual in-game use.

As stated in the product name, there are in total seven feats on one page, with a cover page and a page reserved for the Open Game License.

While I will say that the mechanics are solid and nothing struck me as overpowered nor underpowered, I left feeling slightly underwhelmed, as I was hoping for something a bit more inspiring. Some of the feats requiring "all martial weapon proficiencies" was also slightly off-putting, as it can limit class options, even if the feat would fit the character concept.

I was, however, impressed with the concept of Guarded Attack, which allows you to trade attacks for increased armor. The reason for this is that those later iterative attacks are made with such hefty penalties that sometimes, it makes more sense to gain a bonus to armor instead of hoping for a 1-in-20 chance of actually hitting, although the bonus to the AC could have been a bit better without being too strong.